The Drowned World

by J. G. Ballard

  A sharp spur of pain drove itself into his eustachian tube, forcing him to swallow. Abruptly he realised that the intake valve of the helmet supply was no longer working. A faint hiss seeped through every ten seconds, but the pressure had fallen steeply. Dizzying, he stmnbled up the aisle and tried to free the air-line from the handle, certain now that Strangman had seized the opportunity to fabricate an accident. Breath exploding, he tripped over one of the steps, fell awkwardly across the seats with a gentle ballooning motion.

  As the spotlight flared across the domed ceiling, illuminating the huge vacant womb for the last time, Kerans felt the warm bloodfilled nausea of the chamber flood in upon him. He lay back, spreadeagled across the steps, his hand pressed numbly against the loop of line around the door handle, the soothing pressure of the water penetrating his suit so that the barriers between his own private blood-stream and that of the giant amnion seemed no longer to exist. The deep cradle of silt carried him gently like an immense placenta, infinitely softer than any bed he had ever known. Far above him, as his consciousness faded, he could see the ancient nebulae and galaxies shining through the uterine night, but eventually even their light was dimmed and he was only aware of the faint glimmer of identity within the deepest recesses of his mind. Quietly he began to move towards it, floating slowly towards the centre of the dome, knowing that this faint beacon was receding more rapidly then he could approach it. When it was no longer visible he pressed on through the darkness alone, like a blind fish in an endless forgotten sea, driven by an impulse whose identity be would never comprehend...

  Epochs drifted. Giant waves, infinitely slow and enveloping, broke and fell across the sunless beaches of the time-sea, washing him helplessly in its shallows. He drifted from one pool to another, in the limbos of eternity, a thousand images of himself reflected in the inverted mirrors of the surface. Within his lungs an immense inland lake seemed to be bursting outwards, his rib-cage distended like a whale's to contain the oceanic volumes of water.

  "Kerans..."

  He looked up at the bright deck, at the brilliant panoply of light on the canvas shade above him, at the watchful ebony face of the Admiral sitting across his legs and pumping his chest in his huge hands.

  "Strangman, he..." Choking on the expressed fluid in his throat, Kerans let his head loll back onto the hot deck, the sunlight stinging his eyes. A circle of faces looked down at him intently—Beatrice, her eyes wide with alarm, Bodkin frowning seriously, a motley of brown faces under khaki kepis. Abruptly a single white grinning face interposed itself. Only a few feet from him, it leered like an obscene statue.

  "Strangman, you–"

  The grin broke into a winning smile. "No, I didn't, Kerans. Don't try to pin the blame on me. Dr. Bodkin will vouch for that." He waggled a finger at Kerans. "I warned you not to go down too far."

  The Admiral stood up, evidently satisfied that Kerans had recovered. The deck seemed to be made of burning iron, and Kerans pulled himself up on one elbow, sat weakly in the pool of water. A few feet away, creased in the scuppers, the suit lay like a deflated corpse.

  Beatrice pushed through the circle of onlookers, and crouched down beside him. "Robert, relax, don't think about it now." She put her arm around his shoulders, glancing up watchfully at Strangman. He stood behind Kerans, grinning with pleasure, hands on hips,

  "The cable seized..." Kerans cleared his head, his lungs like two bruised, tender flowers. He breathed slowly, soothing them with the cool air. "They were pulling it from above. Didn't you stop..."

  Bodkin stepped forward with Kerans' jacket and draped it across his shoulders. "Easy, Robert, it doesn't matter now. Actually, I'm sure it wasn't Strangman's fault, he was talking to Beatrice and me when it happened. The cable was hooked round some obstruction, it looks as if it was a complete accident."

  "No, it wasn't, Doctor," Strangman cut in. "Don't perpetuate a myth, Kerans will be much more grateful for the truth. He anchored that cable himself, quite deliberately. Why?" Here Strangman tapped the air magisterially. "Because he wanted to become part of the drowned world." He began to laugh to himself, slapping his thighs with amusement as Kerans hobbled weakly to his chair. "And the joke is that he doesn't know whether I'm telling the truth or not. Do you realise that, Bodkin? Look at him, he genuinely isn't sure! God, what irony!"

  "Strangman!" Beatrice snapped at him angrily, overcoming her fears. "Stop saying that! It might have been an accident."

  Strangman shrugged theatrically. "It might," he repeated with great emphasis. "Let's admit that. It makes it more interesting—particularly for Kerans. 'Did I or did I not try to kill myself?' One of the few existential absolutes, far more significant than 'To be or not to be?', which merely underlines the uncertainty of the suicide, rather than the eternal ambivalence of his victim." He smiled down patronisingly at Kerans as the latter sat quietly in his chair, sipping at the drink Beatrice had brought him. "Kerans, I envy you the task of finding out—if you can."

  Kerans managed a weak smile. From the speed of his recovery he realised that he had suffered only mildly from the drowning. The remainder of the crew had moved away to their duties, no longer interested.

  "Thank you, Strangman. I'll let you know when I have the answer."

  On the way back to the Ritz he sat silently in the stern of the scow, thinking to himself of the great womb-chamber of the planetarium and the multilayered overlay of its associations, trying to erase from his mind the terrible 'either/or' which Strangman had correctly posed. Had he unconsciously locked the air-pipe, knowing that the tension in the cable would suffocate him, or had it been a complete accident, even, possibly, an attempt by Strangman to injure him? But for the rescue by the two skin divers (perhaps he bad counted on them setting out after him when the telephone cable was disconnected) he would certainly have found the answer. His reasons for making the dive at all remained obscure. There was no doubt that he had been impelled by a curious urge to place himself at Strangman's mercy, almost as if he were staging his own murder.

  During the next few days the conundrum remained unsolved. Was the drowned world itself, and the mysterious quest for the south which had possessed Hardman, no more than an impulse to suicide, an unconscious acceptance of the logic of his own devolutionary descent, the ultimate neuronic synthesis of the archaeopsychic zero? Rather than try to live with yet another enigma, and more and more frightened of the real role that Strangman played in his mind, Kerans systematically repressed his memories of the accident. Likewise, Bodkin and Beatrice ceased to refer to it, as if accepting that an answer to the question would solve for them many of the other mysterious enigmas which now alone sustained them, delusions which, like all the ambiguous but necessary assumptions about their own personalities, they would only sacrifice with reluctance.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SURPRISE PARTY

  "Kerans...!"

  Roused by the deep blare of the hydroplane as it approached the landing stage, Kerans stirred fretfully, his head lolling from side to side on the stale pillow. He focussed his eyes on the bright green parallelograms which dappled the ceiling above the venetian blinds, listening to the engines outside reverse and accelerate, then with an effort pulled himself off the bed. It was already after 7-30, an hour later than he had woken a month earlier, and the brilliant sunlight reflected off the lagoon thrust its fingers into the darkened room like a ravenous golden monster.

  With a pang of annoyance he noticed that he had forgotten to switch off the bedside fan before going to sleep. He had begun to fall asleep now at unpredictable moments, sometimes sitting halfupright on the bed while unlacing his shoes. In an attempt to conserve his fuel he had closed down the bedroom and moved the heavy gilt-framed double bed into the lounge, but its associations with sleep were so powerful that he was soon forced to move it back again.

  "Kerans...!"

  Strangman's voice echoed warningly down the corridor below. Kerans limped slowly to the bathroom, managed to splash his face by the time S
trangman let himself into the suite.

  Tossing his helmet on to the floor, Strangman produced a decanter of hot black coffee and a canned gorgonzola green with age.

  "A present for you." He examined Kerans' dulled eyes with an amiable frown. 'Well, how are things in deep time?"

  Kerans sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for the booming of the phantom jungles in his mind to fade. Like an endless shallows, the residues of the dreams stretched away below the surface of the reality around him. 'What brings you here?" he asked flatly.

  Strangman put on an expression of deep injury.

  "Kerans, I like you. You keep forgetting that." He turned up the volume of the air-conditioner, smiling at Kerans, who gazed watchfully at the wry, perverted leer. "Actually I have another motive—I want you to have dinner with me tonight. Don't start shaking your bead. I have to keep coming here, it's time I returned your hospitality. Beatrice and old Bodkin will be there, it should be pretty swagger—firework displays, bongo drums and a surprise."

  "What exactly?"

  "You'll see. Something really spectacular, believe me, I don't do things by halves. I'd have those 'gators dancing on the tips of their tails if I wanted to." He nodded solemnly. "Kerans, you're going to be impressed. And it may even do you some good mentally, stop this crazy time machine of yours." His mood changed, becoming distant and abstracted. "But I mustn't poke fun at you, Kerans, I couldn't bear a tenth of the personal responsibility you've shouldered. The tragic loneliness, for example, of those haunted Triassic swamps." He picked a book off the air-conditioner, a copy of Donne's poems, and extemporised a line: 'World within world, each man an island unto himself, swimming through seas of archipelagoes..."

  Fairly certain that he was fooling, Kerans asked: "How's the diving going?"

  "Frankly, not very well. The city's too far north for much to have been left. But we've discovered a few interesting things. You'll see tonight."

  Kerans hesitated, doubting whether he would have enough energy to make small talk with Dr. Bodkin and Beatrice—he had seen neither of them since the debacle of the diving party, though every evening Strangman drove over in his hydroplane to Beatrice's apartment house (what success he had Kerans could only guess, but Strangman's references to her—"Women are like spiders, they sit there watching you and knitting their webs" or "she keeps talking about you, Robert, confound her"—indicated a negative response).

  However, the particular twist of emphasis in Strangman's voice suggested that Kerans' attendance was obligatory, and that he would not be allowed to refuse. Strangman followed him into the lounge, waiting for a reply.

  "It's rather short notice, Strangman."

  "I'm terribly sorry, Kerans, but as we know each other so well I felt sure you wouldn't mind. Blame it on my manic-depressive personality, I'm always seizing on wild schemes."

  Kerans found two gold-plated porcelain coffee cups and filled them from the decanter. Know each other so well, he repeated to himself ironically. I'm damned if I know you at all, Strangman. Racing around the lagoons like the delinquent spirit of the drowned city, apotheosis of all its aimless violence and cruelty, Strangman was half-buccaneer, half-devil. Yet he had a further neuronic role, in which he seemed almost a positive influence, holding a warning mirror up to Kerans and obliquely cautioning him about the future he had chosen. It was this bond that kept them together, for otherwise Kerans would long since have left the lagoon and moved southwards.

  "I assume this isn't a farewell celebration?" he asked Strangman. "You aren't leaving us?"

  "Kerans, of course not," Strangman remonstrated. "We've only just got here. Besides," he added sagely, "where would we go? There's nothing much left now—I can tell you, I sometimes feel like Phlebas the Phoenician. Though that's really your role, isn't it?

  "—A current under sea

  Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell

  He passed the stages of his age and youth

  Entering the whirlpool."

  He continued to pester Kerans until the latter accepted his invitation, then made off jubilantly. Kerans finished the coffee in the decanter, when he began to recover drew the venetian blinds and let in the bright sunlight.

  Outside, in his chair on the veranda, a white monitor lizard sat and regarded him with its stony eyes, waiting for something to happen.

  As he rode across the lagoon to the paddle-ship that evening, Kerans speculated on the probable nature of Strangman's 'surprise', hoping that it would not be some elaborate practical joke. The effort of shaving off his beard and putting on a white dinner jacket had tired him.

  Considerable preparations were obviously afoot in the lagoon. The depot ship had been moored about fifty yards from shore, strung with awnings and coloured lights, and the two remaining SCOWS were working systematically along the banks, driving the alligators into the central lagoon.

  Kerans pointed to a big caiman thrashing about in a circle of boathooks, and said to Big Caesar: "What's on the menu tonight– roast alligator?"

  The giant hunch-backed mulatto at the helm of the scow shrugged with studied vagueness. "Strang' got a big show tonight, Mistah Kerans, a real big show. You see."

  Kerans left his seat and leaned on the bridge. "Big Caesar, how long have you known the Captain?"

  "Long time, Mistah Kerans. Ten years, maybe twenty."

  "He's a strange one, all right," Kerans continued. "His moods change so quickly—you must have noticed that, working for him. Sometimes he frightens me."

  The big mulatto smiled cryptically. "You right there, Mistah Kerans," he rejoined with a chuckle. "You really right."

  But before Kerans could press him a megaphone jabbed at them across the water from the bridge of the depot ship.

  Strangman met each one of his guests as they arrived at the head of the gangway. In high spirits, he managed a sustained mood of charm and good cheer, complimenting Beatrice elaborately on her appearance. She wore a full-length blue brocade ball dress, the turquoise mascara around her eyes making her look like some exotic bird of paradise. Even Bodkin had contrived to trim his beard and salvage a respectable linen jacket, an old piece of crepe around his neck a ragged concession to a black tie. Like Kerans, however, they both seemed glazed and remote, joining in the conversation over dinner automatically.

  Strangman, however, failed to notice this, or if he did was too elated and preoccupied to care. Whatever his motives, he had obviously gone to considerable trouble to stage his surprise. A fresh canvas awning had been broken out like a crisp white sail over the observation deck, flared at its rim in the form of an inverted marquee to give them an uninterrupted view over the lagoon and sky. A large circular dining table stood by the rail, iow divans in the Egyptian style, with spiral gilt and ivory bolsters, disposed around it. A clutter of unmatched but nonetheless brilliant pieces of gold and silver dining plate decorated the table, much of it of huge proportions–. The ormolu finger-bowls were the size of face baths.

  Strangman had rifled his treasure house below in an access of profligacy—several pieces of blackened bronze statuary stood about behind the table bearing salvers of fruit and orchids, and an immense canvas by some painter of the school of Tintoretto had been propped against the funnels and screened the service hatches, looming down over the table like a mural. Its title was 'The Marriage of Ester and King Xerxes' but the pagan treatment and the local background of the Venetian lagoon and the Grand Canal palazzos, coupled with the Quincento decor and costume, made it seem more like 'The Marriage of Neptune and Minerva,' no doubt the moral Strangman intended to point. King Xerxes, a wily, beak-nosed elderly Doge or Venetian Grand-Admiral, already seemed completely tamed by his demure, raven-haired Ester, who had a faint but nonetheless perceptible likeness to Beatrice. As he cast his eyes over the crowded spread of the canvas with its hundreds of wedding guests, Kerans suddenly saw another familiar profile—the face of Strangman among the hard cruel smiles of the Council of Ten—but when he approached the painting th
e similarity vanished.

  The marriage ceremony was being celebrated aboard a galleon moored against the Doge's Palace, and its elaborate rococo rigging seemed to merge directly into the steel hawzers and bracing lines of the depot ship. Apart from the kindred settings, emphasised by the two lagoons and the buildings rising from the water, Strangman's motley crew might themselves have stepped straight from the canvas, with its jewelled slaves and negro captain of gondoliers.

  Sipping his cocktail, Kerans said to Beatrice: "Do you see yourself there, Bea? Obviously, Strangman hopes you'll subdue the floodwaters with the same skill Ester used to pacify the King."

  "Correct, Kerans!" Strangman stepped over to them from the bridge. "You have it exactly." He bowed to Beatrice. "I hope you accept the compliment, my dear?"

  "I'm very flattered, Strangman, of course." Beatrice moved over to the painting, examining her double, then turned in a swirl of brocade and stood by the rail, staring out over the water. "But I'm not sure whether I want to be cast in that role, Strangman."

  "But you are, Miss DahI, inescapably." Strangman gestured the steward over to Bodkin, who was sitting in a quiet reverie, then slapped Kerans on the shoulder. "Believe me, Doctor, you'll soon see–"

  "Good. I'm getting a little impatient, Strangman."

  "What, after thirty million years you can't wait five minutes? I'm obviously bringing you back to the present."

  Throughout the meal Strangman supervised the succession of wines, taking advantage of his absences from the table to confer with the Admiral. With the final brandies before them, Strangman sat down apparently for the last time, winking broadly at Kerans. Two of the scows had moved over to the inlet by the far side of the lagoon and disappeared into its mouth, while the third took up its position in the centre, from where it released a small firework display.